Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2047 (starts 11/16/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/346675-dc-2047 

    This week, following a set of tunes from around 1969, we feature a pair of LP sides. The first of these showcases the virtuosity of the five members of the Pentangle, while the second is one of the first rock adaptations of a classical work: Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, as interpreted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. For a grand finale we have Pink Floyd, accompanied by a friend, on a little 12-bar blues number.

Artist:    Canned Heat
Title:    Going Up The Country
Source:    British import CD:  Living The Blues
Writer(s):    Alan Wilson
Label:    BGO (original label: Liberty)
Year:    1968
    Canned Heat built up a solid reputation as one of the best blues-rock bands in history, recording several critically-acclaimed albums over a period of years. What they did not have, however, was a top 10 single. The nearest they got was Going Up The Country from their late 1968 LP Living The Blues, which peaked in the #11 spot in early 1969.

Artist:    Janis Joplin/Kozmic Blues Band
Title:    Piece Of My Heart (live)
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single from box set: Move Over
Writer(s):    Ragovoy/Shuman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2011
    Janis Joplin's biggest misstep in her short career was leaving Big Brother and the Holding Company and forming the Kozmic Blues Band. The new group was even more chaotic than Big Brother, as can be heard on this 1969 live recording of Piece Of My Heart, but was never able to make a connection with its audience the way Big Brother did.

Artist:    Bubble Puppy
Title:    Thinkin' About Thinkin'
Source:    Mono British import CD: A Gathering Of Promises
Writer(s):    Cox/Corbin
Label:    Charly (original US label: International Artists
Year:    1969
    Following the surprise success of the Bubble Puppy's Hot Smoke And Sasafrass, the band rushed out an album in early 1969, but it hit the racks after the single had already hit its peak. For most of the rest of the year the band toured extensively, only recording three new songs during that time. One of these, released as a single in October, was Thinkin' About Thinkin', a song that was deliberately commercial yet also managed to rock out pretty hard, thanks to a blistering Rod Prince guitar solo. Problems between the band and their label, the Houston-based International Artists, led to the group moving to California and changing their name to Demian after acquiring Steppenwolf's Nick St. Nicholas as a manager. They finally disbanded in 1972.

Artist:    Spirit
Title:    1984
Source:    Mono CD: The Best Of Spirit (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Randy California
Label:    Epic
Year:    1969
    One of Spirit's best known songs is 1984, a non-album single released in 1969 in between the band's second and third LPs. Unlike the Rolling Stones' 2000 Man, 1984 was not so much a predictive piece as an interpretation of concepts first expressed in George Orwell's book of the same name. Of course, by the time the actual year 1984 arrived it had become obvious that politics had moved in an entirely different direction than predicted, although some of the mind control techniques described in both the book and song were already being used, while others had to wait until the 21st century to come to pass.

Artist:    Deep Purple
Title:    Black Night
Source:    CD: The Very Best Of Deep Purple (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    Prior to 1970, Deep Purple had achieved a moderate amount of success, but were pretty much ignored in their native England. That all changed, however, with the addition of two new members, lead vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover. Following the experimental Concerto For Group and Orchestra, the band's new lineup released its first studio album, Deep Purple In Rock, on June 3, 1970. Two days later the released a non-album single called Black Night. The song was an instant hit, going all the way to the #2 spot on the British charts and quickly becoming part of the band's concert repertoire, usually as the first encore.

Artist:     Pentangle
Title:     Jack Orion
Source:     European import CD: Cruel Sister
Writer(s):    Trad., arr. Pentangle
Label:     Castle (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1970
     The showpiece of the 1970 Pentangle album Cruel Sister was this 18 1/2 minute version of the old English folk song Jack Orion. Done in a theme and variations type of format favored by classical composers and incorporating elements of jazz and rock, as well as folk music, Jack Orion was first recorded by Pentangle member Bert Jansch on his solo album of the same name in 1966.

Artist:    Emerson, Lake And Palmer
Title:    Pictures At An Exhibition-part one
Source:    LP: Pictures At An Exhibition
Writer(s):    Mussorgsky/Emerson/Lake/Palmer
Label:    Atlantic (original label: Cotillion)
Year:    1971
    After releasing a popular debut LP, you might expect a band to follow it up with a similar sounding album. If were a band led by someone other than Keith Emerson, that might indeed have been the case. But Emerson, Lake And Palmer instead took a more daring route, much to the displeasure of their UK label, Island Records. They insisted that their second album be a live performance of the band's adaptation of Mussorgsky's Pictures At An Exhibition, a piece originally written for piano and then adapted for full orchestra. ELP's version of the suite differs radically from the original, especially the Baba Yaga sections, which are laden with feedback and electronic effects. Island, however, was frankly scared of the album, so much so that they insisted on releasing it on their classical subsidiary rather than the parent label. The band, however, felt that having the album appear on a classical label would be detrimental to the LP's sales, and withdrew the album entirely, instead releasing a second studio LP, Tarkus. After the success of Tarkus, Island agreed to release Pictures At An Exhibition on the parent label, but priced as if it were a single, thus exempting it from the UK album charts. The album, of course, sold well at that price and, surprisingly, did all right in the US as well, where it carried a standard sticker price.

Artist:    Pink Floyd
Title:    Seamus
Source:    CD: Meddle
Writer:    Waters/Wright/Mason/Gilmour
Label:    Pink Floyd Records (original label: Harvest)
Year:    1971
    After spending several months on the concept album Atom Heart Mother, the members of Pink Floyd decided to lighten things up a bit for their next album, Meddle. Stylistically, Meddle probably has the most variety of any Pink Floyd album, ranging from the driving rocker One Of These Days, to the acoustic blues tune Seamus. The latter song is best played loud, preferably with at least one dog in the room with you.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2046 (starts 11/9/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/345776-pe-2046 

    This week's show has the distinction of not having any two songs from the same year back-to-back for the entire show (the two 1967 tracks in the middle are separated by the first hour break song and local station breaks). Considering that sets featuring songs from a particular year have been a staple of Stuck in the Psychedelic Era pretty much from the beginning, this is definitely a weird one, all right.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    The Bells Of Rhymney
Source:    LP: The Byrds' Greatest Hits
Writer(s):    Davies/Seeger
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1965
    It's hard to argue with the fact that the Byrds, on the early albums, did a lot of Bob Dylan covers. In fact, their first hit, Mr. Tambourine Man, was written by Dylan, as were three other tracks on their first LP. Dylan was not the only artist covered by the Byrds, however. Their second #1 hit, Turn Turn Turn, was written by Pete Seeger, as was The Bells Of Rhymney, a track on their first LP. The song was adapted by Seeger from a lyric by Welsh poet Idris Davies, and tells the story of a coal mining disaster in Wales. The Byrds began performing the song during their time as the house band at Ciro's, a club on Los Angeles's Sunset Strip, and it quickly became an audience favorite. George Harrison was reportedly influenced by Roger McGuinn's guitar riff for The Bells Of Rhymney when writing his own If I Needed Someone for the Rubber Soul album.

Artist:    Knickerbockers
Title:    One Track Mind
Source:    Mono CD: Even More Nuggets (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    L. Colley/K. Colley
Label:    Rhino (original label: Challenge)
Year:    1966
    After successfully fooling many people into thinking that they were the Beatles recording under a different name with their 1965 hit Lies, the Knickerbockers (originally from Bergenfield, New Jersey) went with a more R&B flavored rocker for their follow up single. Unfortunately their label, the Los Angeles-based Challenge Records, did not have the resources and/or skills to properly promote the single.

Artist:     Rolling Stones
Title:     My Obsession
Source:     CD: Between The Buttons
Writer:     Jagger/Richards
Label:     Abkco (original label: London)
Year:     1967
     My Obsession, from the 1967 album Between The Buttons, is the kind of song that garage bands loved: easy to learn, easy to sing, easy to dance to. The Rolling Stones, of course, were the kings of this type of song, which is why so many US garage bands sounded like the Stones.

Artist:    John Mayall
Title:    2401 (single version)
Source:    European import CD: Blues From Laurel Canyon (bonus track)
Writer(s):    John Mayall
Label:    Decca (original US label: London)
Year:    1968
    John Mayall's Blues From Laurel Canyon was a sort of musical travelogue, describing his first trip to California, where he hung out with various musicians, groupies and hippy types in Los Angeles's Laurel Canyon. Among those he met were Frank Zappa, who had several people either living with or frequently visiting him, including members of the GTOs and his own band, the Mothers. This became the subject of the song 2401, which was also released as a single in Germany and Spain and as a B side in the UK, Italy and New Zealand.

Artist:    Gandalf
Title:    Can You Travel In The Dark Alone
Source:    LP: Gandalf
Writer(s):    Peter Sando
Label:    Capitol
Year:    1969
    What's in a name? Well, when You're a rock band and your name is the Rhagoos, apparently not enough to keep the producers happy. The name the producers suggested, however, was even worse. I mean, you really can't blame the band members for hating a name like the Knockrockers, right? It took a while, but after throwing around several possibilities, the band decided to go with Gandalf And The Wizards, a name suggested by drummer Davy Bauer that was later shortened to just Gandalf. Gandalf only recorded one album, which was released on the Capitol label in 1969. Most of the tracks on that album were cover songs, with only two originals, both of which were provided by guitarist Peter Sando. Of those, Can You Travel In The Dark Alone is the more notable. For the completists among you, the other two members of this New York band were Bob Muller (bass) and Frank Hubach (keyboards). I'm not sure who provided the vocals, although my guess would be Sando.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Maggie M'Gill
Source:    CD: Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine (originally released on LP: Morrison Hotel)
Writer(s):    Morrison/Doors
Label:    Elektra/Rhino
Year:    1970
    1969 was not a particularly good year for the Doors. In March, Jim Morrison got arrested for allegedly exposing himself on stage in Florida, resulting in several tour dates being cancelled. Then, with perhaps too much time on their hands, they came up with the over-produced mess known as The Soft Parade, which got the worst reviews of any Doors album to date. By the end of the year, however, they were starting to get back on track, dispensing with the strings and horns heard on The Soft Parade in favor of a more stripped-down sound typical of the band's early club days for their next LP, Morrison Hotel. They also brought in key guest musicians, including guitarist Lonnie Mack, who can be heard playing bass on the last track of Morrison Hotel, a tune written by the band with lyrics by Morrison called Maggie M'Gill. The song is a good indication of what was to come on what would be their last LP with Morrison, the classic L.A. Woman.
    
Artist:    Yardbirds
Title:    Evil Hearted You
Source:    Mono Australian import CD: Over Under Sideways Down (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single and in US on LP: Having A Rave UP)
Writer(s):    Graham Gouldman
Label:    Raven (original US label: Epic)
Year:    1965
    Perhaps more than that of any other British invasion band, the Yardbirds' US and UK catalogs differ wildly. One of their biggest UK hits was Evil Hearted You, a Graham Gouldman song that made it all the way to the # 3 spot in their native land, but was not even released as a single in the US. Instead, the song appeared on the group's most popular US album, Having A Rave Up, which was not released in the UK at all. Confusing stuff, that.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Sleepy Time Time
Source:    LP: Fresh Cream
Writer(s):    Bruce/Godfrey
Label:    Atco
Year:    1966
    When Cream was first formed, both Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker worked with co-writers on original material for the band. Baker's partner was Pete Brown, while Bruce worked with his wife, Janet Godfrey. Eventually Bruce and Brown began collaborating, creating some of Cream's most memorable songs, but not before Bruce and Godfrey wrote Sleepy Time Time, one of the high points of the Fresh Cream album.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Mrs. Robinson
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1968
    A shortened version of Mrs. Robinson first appeared on the soundtrack for the film The Graduate in 1967, but it wasn't until the Bookends album came out in 1968 that the full four minute version was released. Although the Graduate was one of the most successful films of the decade, I suspect that many more people have heard the song than have seen the film. Take that, movie lovers!

Artist:     Simon and Garfunkel
Title:     Somewhere They Can't Find Me
Source:     CD: Collected Works (originally released on LP: Sounds of Silence)
Writer:     Paul Simon
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1966
    Simon and Garfunkel's success as a folk-rock duo was actually due to the unauthorized actions of producer John Simon, who, after working on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album, got Dylan's band to add new tracks to the song Sound of Silence. The song had been recorded as an acoustic number for the album Wednesday Morning 3AM, which had, by 1966, been deleted from the Columbia catalog. The new version of the song was sent out to select radio stations, and got such positive response that it was released as a single, eventually making the top 10. Meanwhile, Paul Simon, who had since moved to London and recorded an album called the Paul Simon Songbook, found himself returning to the US and reuniting with Art Garfunkel. Armed with an array of quality studio musicians they set about making their first electric album, Sounds of Silence. The song Somewhere They Can't Find Me was one of the new songs recorded for that album. From a lyrical standpoint, the song is actually a reworking of the title track of Wednesday Morning 3AM. Musically, the song shows a strong influence from British folk guitarist Bert Jansch, whom Simon greatly admired.

Artist:    Simon And Garfunkel
Title:    Fakin' It
Source:    LP: Bookends
Writer(s):    Paul Simon
Label:    Columbia/Sundazed
Year:    1967
    Fakin' It, originally released as a single in 1967, was a bit of a departure for Simon And Garfunkel, sounding more like British psychedelic music than American folk-rock. The track starts with an intro that is similar to the false ending to the Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever; midway through the record the tempo changes drastically for a short spoken word section that makes a reference to a "Mr. Leitch" (the last name of the Scottish folksinger turned psychedelic pioneer Donovan). The stereo mix of Fakin' It was first released on the 1968 LP Bookends.

Artist:    Association
Title:    One Too Many Mornings
Source:    CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Valiant)
Year:    1965
    The Association is a name that will always be associated (sorry) with soft-pop hits like Cherish, Never My Love and Windy. Originally, though, they had a hard time getting a record deal, due to their somewhat experimental approach to pop music (co-founder Terry Kirkman had played in a band with Frank Zappa prior to forming the Association, for instance). Eventually they got a deal with Jubilee Records but were unable to get decent promotion from the label. Finally producer Curt Boettcher took an interest in the group, convincing Valiant Records (which had a distribution deal with Warner Brothers) to buy out the Association's contract. The first record the group recorded for Valiant was a single version of Bob Dylan's One Too Many Mornings. Unlike many of their later records, which used studio musicians extensively, One Too Many Mornings featured the band members playing all their own instruments. Boettcher would go on to produce the Association's debut LP in 1966, which included the hits Along Comes Mary and Cherish, before moving on to other projects.

Artist:     Turtles
Song:     She's My Girl
Source:     45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Bonner/Gordon
Label:    White Whale
Year:     1967
     After a moderate amount of success in 1965 with a series of singles starting with a cover of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles found themselves running out of steam by the end of 1966. Rather than throw in the towel, they enlisted the services of the Bonner/Gordon songwriting team (from a New York band called the Magicians) and recorded their most successful single, Happy Together, in 1967. They dipped into the same well for She's My Girl later the same year.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Victoria
Source:    CD: The Kink Kronikles (originally released on LP: Arthur or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1969
    The Kinks were at their commercial low point in 1969 when they released their third single from their controversial concept album Arthur or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire. Their previous two singles had failed to chart, even in their native England, and the band had not had a top 20 hit in the US since Sunny Afternoon in 1966. Victoria was a comeback of sorts, as it did manage to reach the #62 spot in the US and the #33 spot in the UK.

Artist:    Romancers (aka the Smoke Rings)
Title:    Love's The Thing
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Max and Bob Uballez
Label:    Rhino (original label: Linda)
Year:    1965
    Love's The Thing, a favorite on local Los Angeles radio stations in 1965, was actually released three times on three labels under two different band names. Such was the studio scene in East L.A. in the mid-60s. Max Uballez, leader of the Romancers, was the driving force behind this and many other tunes appearing on the Linda and Faro labels, among others. The prolific Uballez was considered by many to be East L.A.'s answer to Phil Spector (or maybe Brian Wilson). Originally released as a B side on the Linda label in 1965, the exact same recording of Love's The Thing appeared as an A side by the Smoke Rings on the Prospect label in early 1966, and was picked up for national distribution on the Dot label later that same year.

Artist:    Butterfield Blues Band
Title:    Get Out Of My Life Woman
Source:    CD: East-West
Writer(s):    Alan Toussaint
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1966
    The second Butterfield Blues Band album, East-West, released in 1966, is best known for the outstanding guitar work of Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop. One often overlooked member of the group was keyboardist Mark Naftalin, who, along with Butterfield and Bishop, was a founding member of the band. Naftalin's keyboard work is the highlight of the band's cover of Alan Toussaint's Get Out Of My Life Woman, which was a hit for Lee Dorsey the same year.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Love
Source:    LP: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    McDonald/Melton/Cohen/Barthol/Gunning/Hirsch
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    It is a little known fact that, for a short time in early 1967, Country Joe McDonald and Janis Joplin were lovers. This could very well explain why Joe sounds just a bit like Janis on the song Love, from the first Country Joe And The Fish album, Electric Music For The Mind And Body, which was released in May of that year.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Spanish Castle Magic
Source:    LP: Axis: Bold As Love
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    MCA/Experience Hendrix (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1967
    When the second Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Axis: Bold As Love, came out it was hailed as a masterpiece of four-track engineering. Working closely with producer Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer, Hendrix used the recording studio itself as an instrument, making an art form out of the stereo mixing process. The unfortunate by-product of this is that most of the songs on the album could not be played live and still sound anything like the studio version. One notable exception is Spanish Castle Magic, which became a more or less permanent part of the band's performing repertoire.

Artist:    Jigsaw Seen
Title:    Madame Whirligig
Source:    CD: Old Man Reverb
Writer(s):    Dennis Davison
Label:    Vibro-Phonic
Year:    2014
    The Jigsaw Seen has been around since 1988, when it was formed by Dennis Davison, formerly of the United States Of Existence. The group's first single, Jim Is The Devil, was released by Get Hip Records in 1989, with their debut LP Shortcut Through Clown Alley appearing the following year on the New Jersey based Skyclad Records.  The band's latest release is an album called Old Man Reverb that shows a band in the process of exploring new ground on tunes like Madame Whirligig.

Artist:    Squires Of The Subterrain
Title:    On The Lawns
Source:    Mono CD: Feel The Sun
Writer(s):    Christopher Zajkowski
Label:    Rocket Racket
Year:    2008
    Based in Rochester, NY, the Squires Of The Subterrain are (is?) the work of Christopher Earl of Rochester, NY, who has been releasing independent recordings on his own Rocket Racket label for the better part of 20 years. His 2008 album Feel The Sun is a kind of combined tribute to Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney, who spent much of 1966 trying to outdo each other on albums like Pet Sounds and Revolver. On The Lawns, while retaining a McCartney feel, has vocals more reminiscent of Wilson's.

Artist:    King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
Title:    The Bitter Boogie
Source:    CD: Paper Mache Dream Balloon
Writer(s):    King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
Label:    ATO
Year:    2015
    For years I have scoffed at people who use the phrase "I listen to all kinds of music", mainly because what they mean is "all kinds of pop music" or "all kinds of hip hop" or maybe "all kinds of country". Seldom have I run across anyone who actually listens to several genres of music. Even more rare are people who make "all kinds of music". While King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard does not make "all" kinds of music, they certainly cover a wider variety of styles than just about anybody currently recording. As an added bonus, they write all their own material. The seven-piece band from Australia was formed in 2011 by members of several other bands, and has managed to release eight albums over the past four years, despite a busy touring schedule that has included two trips to North America and one to Europe. The Bitter Boogie, from their most recent album, Paper Mache Dream Balloon, is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek take on a musical form that is often associated with Canned Heat. Fun stuff!

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    Moonchild
Source:    CD: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer(s):    Fripp/McDonald/Lake/Giles/Sinfield
Label:    Discipline Global Mobile (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    Of the five original tracks on the 1969 album In The Court Of The Crimson King, Moonchild has gotten the least amount of radio exposure over the years. This is probably because the bulk of the track consists of, well, noodling. The track's official title is: Moonchild (Including "The Dream" And "The Illusion"), with the first two minutes of the piece (The Dream) featuring mainly Ian McDonald's mellotron playing supplemented by Greg Lake's vocals. The remainder of the twelve-minute track is purely improvisational, with long periods of near-silence that, in the days before digital recording, were almost always marred by tics and pops that accumulate on the surface of vinyl records.

Artist:    Fleetwood Mac
Title:    Black Magic Woman
Source:    LP: Golden Hits Of British Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Peter Green
Label:    Sire (original label: Epic)
Year:    1968
    The original version of Black Magic Woman was the third single released by Fleetwood Mac. Written by the band's founder, Peter Green, the song has become a classic rock standard thanks to the 1970 cover of the song released by Santana on the album Abraxas. Many blues-rock purists, however, prefer the Fleetwood Mac original.

Artist:     Seeds
Title:     Pushin' Too Hard
Source:     Simulated stereo CD: Best of 60s Psychedelic Rock (originally released on LP: The Seeds)
Writer:     Sky Saxon
Label:     Priority (original label: GNP Crescendo)
Year:     1965
     Pushin' Too Hard was originally released to the L.A. market as a single in late 1965 and included on side one of the first Seeds album the following year. After being re-released as a single the song did well enough to go national in early 1967, peaking at #36 in February.

Artist:     Love
Title:     Softly To Me
Source:     CD: Love
Writer:     Bryan McLean
Label:     Elektra
Year:     1966
     Bryan McLean's role as a songwriter in Love was similar to George Harrison's as a Beatle. He didn't have more than one or two songs on any particular LP, but those songs were often among the best tracks on the album. The first of these was Softly To Me from the band's debut LP. 

Artist:    Cyrkle
Title:    The Visit (She Was Here)
Source:    CD: Red Rubber Ball (a collection)
Writer(s):    Chandler/McKendry
Label:    Columbia/Legacy
Year:    1967
    If you were to look up the term "diminishing returns" in a pop music encyclopedia, you might see a picture of the Cyrkle. Their first single, Red Rubber Ball, was a huge hit in 1966, going all the way to the #2 spot, with the album of the same name peaking at #47. The follow-up single, Turn Down Day, was also a top 20 hit, but it would be their last. Each consecutive single, in fact, would top out just a little bit lower than the one before it. Their first single of 1967 only managed to peak at #70. The B side of that single was the soft-rock tune The Visit (She Was Here), which was taken from the Cyrkle's second LP, Neon (which only managed to make it to #164 on the album charts). The group disbanded later that same year.

Artist:    Zombies
Title:    This Will Be Our Year
Source:    CD: Odessey And Oracle
Writer(s):    Chris White
Label:    Varese Sarabonde (original label: Date)
Year:    1968
    The Zombies second (and final) album, Odyssey And Oracle, was made pretty much under duress. The band had secured a contract with the British CBS label, but because of budget and time constraints, the recordings were done quickly, with no outtakes or unused songs from the sessions. Like many songs recorded at Abbey Road Studios at the time, This Will Be Our Year was first mixed monoraully, with horns added during the mixing process. As a result, the stereo version of the album contained a fake stereo mix made from the mono master. Since mono pressings were being phased out in the US, only the fake stereo version was available to American record buyers. The version heard here is a stereo mix made from the multitrack master tape without the overdubbed horns.

Artist:    Beach Boys
Title:    Wouldn't It Be Nice
Source:    Mono LP: Pet Sounds
Writer(s):    Wilson/Asher/Love
Label:    Capitol/EMI
Year:    1966
    Wouldn't It Be Nice is the first song on what has come to be considered Brian Wilson's first true masterpiece: the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album. Wilson has often cited the Beatles' Rubber Soul as his inspiration for Pet Sounds; not because of any musical similarity, but because neither album has any "filler" material on it (although an argument could be made that Sloop John B, which was released as a single almost six months before Pet Sounds, was not really in line with the rest of the songs on the album). Wouldn't It Be Nice (backed with God Only Knows) was released in mid-July of 1966 as a single, two months after the release of Pet Sounds, while Wilson was already working on a followup single: Good Vibrations. The song was originally credited to Wilson, with lyrics by Peter Asher, but in 1994 Mike Love won a lawsuit acknowledging his contributions to 35 Beach Boys songs, including Wouldn't It Be Nice. Asher later testified, under oath, that Love's contribution was the fade out line "Good night my baby, sleep tight my baby" and possibly some minor vocal arrangements.

Artist:     Donovan
Title:     Writer In The Sun
Source:     LP: Mellow Yellow
Writer:     Donovan Leitch
Label:     Epic
Year:     1967
     In 1966-67 Donovan's career was almost derailed by a contractual dispute with his UK label, Pye Records. This resulted in two of his albums, Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, not being issued in the UK. At the time he felt that there was a real chance that he would be forced into retirement by the dispute, and wrote Writer In The Sun as a way of addressing the subject. Ironically his career was going nowhere but up in the US due to him switching from the relatively small Hickory label to industry giant Columbia's subsidiary label Epic Records and scoring top 10 singles with Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow. His success with those records in the US may have been a factor in Pye settling with the singer-songwriter and issuing a British album that combined tracks from the two albums in late 1967.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:    Born On The Bayou
Source:    LP: Bayou Country
Writer(s):    John Fogerty
Label:    Fantasy
Year:    1968
    If there is any single song that sums up what Creedence Clearwater Revival was all about, it could very well be Born On The Bayou, the opening track of CCR's second LP, Bayou Country. The song, which was written by John Fogerty late at night, became the opening for nearly every Creedence concert over the next few years, and is considered by many to be the band's signature song. Oddly enough, John Fogerty had never set foot on a bayou in his life when he wrote the song, but had always been a fan of the movie Swamp Fever, as well as having a fascination with "every other bit of southern bayou information that had entered my imagination from the time I was born."

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    The Stomp
Source:    LP: Ssssh!
Writer(s):    Alvin Lee
Label:    Deram
Year:    1969
    The Stomp is your basic boogie done Ten Years After style. 'Nuff said.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2046 (starts 11/9/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/345774-dc-2046 

    The emphasis this week is on debuts, including tracks from the first album's of bands like Wishbone Ash, Black Sabbath, and others. We also have a track from Jimmy Miller's first album as the Rolling Stones' producer and Hawkwind's first demo (recorded when they were still calling themselves Hawkwind Zoo), plus a cut from the first album ever to include a giant rolling paper. It all starts with the first record to feature Neil Young and Graham Nash together without Crosby or Stills.

Artist:    Neil Young/Graham Nash
Title:    War Song
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer:    Neil Young
Label:    Reprise
Year:    1972
    Around the same time that Neil Young was working on his Harvest LP he recorded War Song with Graham Nash and the Stray Gators. It was never released on an LP, although it did appear on CD many years later on one of the various anthologies that have been issued over the years.
 
Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Stray Cat Blues
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Jagger/Richards
Label:    ABKCO (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    As a  military dependent overseas I had access to the local Base Exchange. The downside of buying albums there was that they were always a month or two behind the official stateside release dates getting albums in stock. The upside is that the BX had a special of the month that was always a new release for sale at something like 40% off the regular album price. The December 1968 special was a classic-to-be from the Rolling Stones called Beggar's Banquet, which I bought for a buck and a half. Full-priced albums that month included new releases by the Beatles (white album), Hendrix (Electric Ladyland) and Cream (Wheels of Fire). Astute readers may have noticed that all of those full-priced albums were double LP sets. Needless to say, by the end of the month I was broke.

Artist:    Rick Derringer
Title:    Rock And Roll, Hoochie Coo
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Rick Derringer
Label:    Blue Sky
Year:    1974
    In the summer of 1965, 17-year-old Rick Derringer and his band the McCoys were hired to open for the Strangeloves, a group of New York songwriting record producers who were passing themselves off as the sons of Australian sheepherders and had a hit single out called I Want Candy. Not wanting to be the Strangeloves forever, they were already looking for an actual band to perform a new song they had written called My Girl Sloopy. After the show they asked Derringer if he might be interested in providing vocals and guitar parts for My Girl Sloopy. After convincing them to change the title to Hang On Sloopy, Derringer agreed, and the record was credited to the McCoys, despite the fact that the backing tracks had already been recorded by studio musicians. Although the song was a #1 hit worldwide (and is still a standard on oldies stations) it became a bit of an albatross for the band later in the decade, when the McCoys were trying to establish themselves as a serious rock band. In 1970, minus their keyboardist, they teamed up with blues guitarist Johnny Winter to become Johnny Winter And (originally intended to be Johnny Winter And The McCoys). The album, released in September, included four songs written by Derringer. According to Derringer, "The first song I wrote for Johnny was 'Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo'. 'Rock and Roll' to satisfy the rock 'n' roll that I was supposed to be bringing into the picture, and 'Hoochie Koo' to satisfy the king of blues sensibility that Johnny was supposed to maintain." The song was later re-recorded for Derringer's 1973 debut solo LP All American Boy and became Derringer's only top 40 hit in early 1974, peaking at #23.

Artist:    Wishbone Ash
Title:    Phoenix
Source:    CD: Wishbone Ash
Writer(s):    Upton/Turner/Turner/Powell
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1970
    The first Wishbone Ash album was characterized by the dual lead guitar work of Andy Powell and Ted Turner. This is particularly notable on the album's showcase piece, the ten and a half minute long Phoenix. Unfortunately, the lack of a powerful lead vocalist kept Wishbone Ash from becoming a first-tier band.

Artist:    Black Sabbath
Title:    A Bit Of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning
Source:    CD: Black Sabbath
Writer(s):    Iommi/Osbourne/Butler/Ward
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1970
    According to Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, the band's debut LP was recorded in one day, in a marathon 12-hour session, and mixed the following day. Most of the tracks, including the 14-minute long Warning, were done in one take with no overdubs. The tune itself is listed on the US album cover as three separate tracks, even though it is the same continuous piece that appeared on the original UK version of the album. The reason for this is probably so the band could get more in royalties for three compositions than they could for just one. The Grateful Dead did essentially the same thing on their 1968 album Anthem Of The Sun with the 18-minute long track That's It For The Other One. Both albums appeared in the US on the Warner Brothers label.

Artist:    Hawkwind Zoo
Title:    Hurry On Sundown (demo version)
Source:    Mono British import CD: Love, Poetry And Revolution
Writer(s):    Dave Brock
Label:    Grapefruit
Year:    Recorded 1969, released 2013
    The first single by Hawkwind was a tune called Hurry On Sundown, which was also included on their first LP in 1970. The previous year the band had recorded a demo of the song while they were still calling themselves Hawkwind Zoo. That recording remained unreleased until 2013, when it appeared on the British compilation box set Love, Poetry And Revolution.

Artist:    Geronimo Black
Title:    Low Ridin' Man/Siesta
Source:    LP: Geronimo Black
Writer(s):    Black/Cahan/Cantrelli/Gardner
Label:    Uni
Year:    1972
    Q: When is a supergroup not a supergroup? A: When the group is made up of lesser-known members of well-known bands. Case in point: Geronimo Black, formed in 1972 by former Mother Jimmy Carl Black ("The Indian of the group") and named after his firstborn son. Other members of the group included:
•    Andy Cahan, keyboards, from Dr. John & Richard Souther's bands.
•    Tjay Contrelli (John Barberis), saxophone, from Love
•    Bunk Gardner (John Leon Guanerra), horns, from The Mothers of Invention
•    Buzz Gardner (Charles Guanerra), horns
•    Tom Leavey, bass
•    Denny Walley, guitar, from The Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band.
The band didn't last long, however. After recording only one album for MCA's Uni label, the group found themselves banned from the MCA lot for excessive debauchery and general rowdiness.

Artist:    Cheech And Chong
Title:    Ralph And Herbie
Source:    LP: Big Bambu
Writer(s):    Marin/Chong
Label:    Ode
Year:    1972
    Conventional wisdom dictates that if you want to project a family-oriented image, use kids and dogs as props. Cheech and Chong turned that truism on its ear with Ralph And Herbie, a track from their second LP, Big Bambu, that includes such canine behavior as humping, chasing cars and "pinching a loaf".

Artist:    Blues Image
Title:    Leaving My Troubles Behind
Source:    LP: Blues Image
Writer:    Blues Image
Label:    Atco
Year:    1969
    Miami's Blues Image was highly regarded by critics and musicians alike. Unfortunately, they were never able to translate that acclaim into album sales, despite recording a pair of fine albums for Atco. One of the highlights of their self-titled debut LP was a track called Leaving My Troubles Behind. Sung by conga player Joe Lala (who would eventually turn to acting, appearing on TV shows like Miami Vice and doing a ton of voice work for animated shows and video games), the song has all the earmarks of a rock standard, but for some reason never truly caught on. After a second LP charted even lower than the first one, guitarist Mike Pinera left Blues Image to replace Eric Brann in Iron Butterfly, and after yet another commercially unsuccessful album the group disbanded.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2045 (starts 11/2/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/344983-pe-2045 

    This time around we start with four consecutive progressions upward through the years before getting into an artist's set from the Animals and sets from 1967 and 1968. Oh, and there's a Turtles set in the somewhere, too.

Artist:     Love
Title:     You I'll Be Following
Source:     Mono LP: Love
Writer(s):    Arthur Lee
Label:    Elektra
Year:     1966
     When the Byrds decided to tour heavily to support their early hits Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn!, Arthur Lee's band Love was more than happy to fill the void left on the L.A. club scene. The group quickly established itself as the top band on the strip, a title it would hold until the scene itself had its plug pulled by the city in late 1966. From Lee's perspective, the secret to keeping that title was staying close to home, a policy that would prevent them from achieving any kind of major national success. Ironically, Love ultimately had their greatest success in the UK, where they managed to build an ever-growing following despite never having played there.

Artist:    Doors
Title:    Love Me Two Times
Source:    45 RPM single
Writer(s):    The Doors
Label:    Elektra
Year:    1967
    Although the second Doors album is sometimes dismissed as being chock full of tracks that didn't make the cut on the debut LP, the fact is that Strange Days contains some of the Doors best-known tunes. One of those is Love Me Two Times, which was the second single released from the album. The song continues to get heavy airplay on classic rock stations.

Artist:    Rolling Stones
Title:    Prodigal Son
Source:    CD: Beggar's Banquet
Writer(s):    Robert Wilkins
Label:    Abkco (original label: London)
Year:    1968
    The Rolling Stones always had a fondness for American roots music, but by 1967 had largely abandoned the genre in favor of more modern sounds such as pychedelia. The 1968 album Beggar's Banquet, however, marked a return to the band's own roots and included such tunes as Prodigal Son, which at first was credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In reality the song was written by the Reverend Robert Wilkins, and has since been acknowledged as such.

Artist:    Jimi Hendrix Experience
Title:    Red House
Source:    LP: Smash Hits
Writer(s):    Jimi Hendrix
Label:    Reprise
Year:    Recorded 1966, released 1969
    There were actually two different versions of Red House released by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, both of which came from the same December, 1966, sessions. The original version was included on the European pressing of the Are You Experienced album, which was issued in early 1967. The album was not originally available in stereo, and a true stereo mix of this version of Red House was never made, as the track was left off the remixed American version of the LP. In spring of 1967 the band attempted to get a better version of the song, but neither Hendrix or bassist Noel Redding (who had played the original bass part on a regular guitar with its tone controls set to mimic a bass guitar) were satisfied with the later versions. Only one portion of these new recordings was kept, and was combined with the original take to create a new stereo mix for the US version of the 1969 Smash Hits album. This newer mix was also used by MCA for both the 1993 CD reissue of Are You Experienced and the Ultimate Experience anthology. 

Artist:     Kinks
Title:     All Day And All Of The Night
Source:     45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer:     Ray Davies
Label:     Eric (original label: Reprise)
Year:     1964
     Following up on their worldwide hit You Really Got Me, the Kinks proved that lightning could indeed strike twice with All Day And All Of The Night. Although there have been rumors over the years that the guitar solo on the track may have been played by studio guitarist Jimmy Page, reliable sources insist that it was solely the work of Dave Davies, who reportedly slashed his speakers to achieve the desired sound.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Think For Yourself
Source:    CD: Rubber Soul
Writer:    George Harrison
Label:    Parlophone (original US label: Capitol)
Year:    1965
    By the end of 1965 George Harrison was writing two songs per Beatle album. On Rubber Soul, however, one of his two songs was deleted from the US version of the album and appeared on 1966's Yesterday...And Today LP instead. The remaining Harrison song on Rubber Soul was Think For Yourself. Harrison later said that he was still developing his songwriting skills at this point and that bandmate John Lennon had helped write Think For Yourself.
 
Artist:    Mamas And The Papas
Title:    Strange Young Girls
Source:    CD: The Mamas And The Papas
Writer(s):    John Phillips
Label:    MCA (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1966
    The Mamas And The Papas had their own little soap opera going in 1966 when it was discovered that Mama Michelle (who was married to Papa John) and Papa Denny were having an affair. Being the 60s Michelle, but not Denny, soon found herself kicked out of the group, to be replaced by Mama Jill, who was actually Producer Lou's girlfriend. Michelle had already recorded several tracks for the group's second album, and some of those got recorded over by Jill. A couple of months later, however, Michelle rejoined the band and ended up recording over some (but not all) of Jill's vocal tracks. At this late date, nobody seems to know for sure just whose vocals ended up on which tracks by the time the LP hit the racks, and it is even possible that all five singers can be heard on songs such as Strange Young Girls, which has some of the most complex harmonies ever recorded by the group.

Artist:    Bee Gees
Title:    To Love Somebody
Source:    CD: Bee Gees 1st
Writer(s):    Barry and Robin Gibb
Label:    Reprise (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Although the Bee Gees had already established themselves in their native Australia (and recorded a pair of LPs for local labels), they decided to make a fresh start in 1967 by moving to England and issuing an album called Bee Gees 1st. The album was an immediate success, containing no less than three major hits. Of these, the biggest by far was To Love Somebody, which made the charts all over the world, including the all important US market. It was the beginning of one of the most successful runs in the history of popular music.

Artist:    Asylum Choir
Title:    Indian Style
Source:    Mono CD: Look Inside The Asylum Choir (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Russell/Benno
Label:    Rev-Ola (original label: Smash)
Year:    1968
    Leon Russell and Marc Benno were both well-established on the Los Angeles studio scene when they decided to record an album called Look Inside The Asylum Choir in 1968, using several of their fellow studio musicians. Sporting a cover depicting a roll of toilet paper against a background of tiles with the likenesses of Russell and Benno, the album was a curious mix of psychedelia and novelty, with Indian Style (which was also released as a single) being a good example of the latter. Look Inside The Asylum Choir was not an immediate success, but was reissued with a new cover following Russell's emergence as a star in his own right in the early 1970s.

Artist:    Bob Dylan
Title:    Bob Dylan's 115th Dream
Source:    Mono LP: Bringing It All Back Home
Writer(s):    Bob Dylan
Label:    Sundazed/Columbia
Year:    1965
    Bob Dylan presents a somewhat twisted parallel history of the United States on a six and a half minute long track called Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, from his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. The track itself starts off with a magical moment in which Dylan starts the song without realizing the rest of the band is deliberately doing nothing. After a bit of laughter he starts over and the band is right there with him. Fun stuff that is also about as compelling as it gets.

Artist:    Byrds
Title:    Eight Miles High
Source:    European import CD: Pure...Psychedelic Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: Fifth Dimension)
Writer(s):    Clark/McGuinn/Crosby
Label:    Sony Music (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1966
    Gene Clark's final contribution to the Byrds was his collaboration with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn, Eight Miles High. Despite a newsletter from the influential Gavin Report advising stations not to play this "drug song", Eight Miles High managed to hit the top 20 in 1966. The band members themselves claimed that Eight Miles High was not a drug song at all, but was instead referring to the experience of travelling by air. In fact, it was Gene Clark's fear of flying, especially long intercontinental trips, that in part led to his leaving the Byrds.

Artist:     Moby Grape
Title:     Sitting By The Window
Source:     LP: Moby Grape
Writer:     Peter Lewis
Label:     Columbia
Year:     1967
     Moby Grape's powerful 1967 debut managed to achieve what few bands have been able to: a coherent sound despite having wildly different writing styles from the individual members. One of guitarist Peter Lewis's contributions to the album was Sitting By The Window, one of those rare songs that sounds better every time you hear it.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Politician
Source:    CD: Wheels Of Fire
Writer(s):    Bruce/Brown
Label:    Polydor (original label: Atco)
Year:    1968
    Although the songwriting team of Jack Bruce and Pete Brown are best known for providing Cream with its more psychedelic songs such as White Room and Swlabr, they did occasionally come up with bluesier numbers such as Politician from the Wheels Of Fire album. The song quickly became a staple of Cream's live performances.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    The Trip
Source:    Mono CD: Sunshine On The Mountain (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sony (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966
    Donovan had already established a reputation in his native Scotland as the UK's answer to Bob Dylan, but had not had much success in the US, where his records were being released on the relatively poorly distributed Hickory label. That all changed in 1966, however, when he began to move beyond his folk roots and embrace a more electric sound. Unlike Dylan, who basically kept the same style as his acoustic songs, simply adding electic instruments, Donovan took a more holistic approach. The result was a body of music with a much broader range of sounds. The first of these new electric tunes was Sunshine Superman, sometimes cited as the first top 10 psychedelic hit. The B side of Sunshine Superman was a song called The Trip, which managed to be even more psychedelic than it's A side. Both songs soon appeared on Donovan's major US label debut, an album that was not even released in the UK due to a contractual dispute between the singer/songwriter and Pye Records.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Tattoo
Source:    LP: The Who Sell Out
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    Decca
Year:    1967
    Starting in 1966, the Who wrote songs about things no other rock group had even considered writing songs about. Happy Jack, for instance, was about a guy who would hang out on the beach and let the local kids tease (but not faze) him. I'm A Boy was about a guy whose mother insisted on dressing him the same as his sisters. And I'm not even getting into the subject matter of Pictures Of Lily. The Who Sell Out, released in December of 1967, continued this trend with songs like Tattoo, about an adolescent and his brother who go out and get (without their parents' permission) their first tattoos. The song is accompanied by a jingle for Radio London, the most successful of the British pirate radio stations that operated from studios in London but utilized illegal transmitters floating on platforms off the coast (the BBC having a monopoly on broadcasting at the time).

Artist:    Gods
Title:    Toward The Skies
Source:    British import CD: Insane Times (originally released in UK on LP: Genesis)
Writer(s):    Joe Konas
Label:    Zonophone (original label: Columbia)
Year:    1968
    It was probably pretty pretentious for a band to call themselves the Gods, but when you consider that, at various times, the band's lineup included Greg Lake and  Mick Taylor (both future rock gods), as well as two future members of Uriah Heep, the claim somehow doesn't seem quite so outrageous. By the time their first album, Genesis, came out in 1968 both Taylor and Lake had moved on, but between guitarist/keyboardist Ken Hensley, drummer Lee Kerslake (the two aforementioned Heepsters), bassist John Glascock (who would eventually serve as Jethro Tull's bassist until his untimely death in 1979) and guitarist Joe Konas, who wrote the album's opening track, Toward The Skies, the Gods had talent to spare.

Artist:     Pink Floyd
Title:     Bike
Source:     CD: Relics (originally released in UK on LP: The Piper At the Gates of Dawn)
Writer:     Syd Barrett
Label:     Capitol (originally released on EMI/Columbia)
Year:     1967
     Due to an inherent cheapness in Tower Records' approach to pretty much everything, four songs were left off the US version of the first Pink Floyd album, The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, with the band's second UK single, See Emily Play, being inserted in their stead (shortening the album's running time by nearly ten minutes). Among the missing songs was Syd Barrett's Bike, which did not appear in the US until the early 70s, when the Relics compilation was released. All CD releases of Piper in the US have restored the original song lineup and running order.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    What Am I Living For
Source:    Mono LP: Animalization
Writer:    Jay/Harris
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    Throughout their existence the original Animals were known for their love of American Blues and R&B music. In fact, hit singles aside, almost everything they recorded was a cover of an R&B hit. Among the covers on their 1966 LP Animalism (released in the US as Animalization) was What Am I Living For, originally recorded by the legendary Chuck Willis. The original version was released shortly after Willis's death from cancer in 1958, and is considered a classic. The Animals, thanks in large part to their obvious respect and admiration for the song, actually managed to improve on the original (as was often the case with their cover songs).

Artist:    Eric Burdon And The Animals
Title:    Good Times
Source:    45 RPM single B side
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1967
    By the end of the original Animals' run they were having greater chart success with their singles in the US than in their native UK. That trend continued with the formation of the "new" Animals in 1967 and their first single, When I Was Young. Shortly after the first LP by the band now known as Eric Burdon And The Animals came out, M-G-M decided to release the song San Franciscan Nights as a single to take advantage of the massive youth migration to the city that summer. Meanwhile the band's British label decided to instead issue Good Times, (an autobiographical song which was released in the US as the B side to San Franciscan Nights) as a single, and the band ended up with one of their biggest UK hits ever. Riding the wave of success of Good Times, San Franciscan Nights eventually did get released in the UK and was a hit there as well.

Artist:    Animals
Title:    I Put A Spell On You
Source:    Mono LP: Animalization
Writer(s):    Jay Hawkins
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1966
    Sometimes you have to wonder if there was maybe just a little bit of spite and bitterness going on between Alan Price and Eric Burdon during the first six months of 1966. After all, before Burdon joined the band as lead vocalist in 1962, it was known as the Alan Price Rhythm And Blues Combo, but soon was rechristened the Animals. Over the next couple of years Burdon supplanted Price as the band's leader, both on and off stage, finally leading Price to leave the group in mid-1965 to form his own band, the Alan Price Combo. The second single released by Price was a cover of Screaming Jay Hawkins' I Put A Spell On You, released in March of 1966. At that same time, the Animals, with new keyboardist Dave Rowberry, were in the process of recording their third album, Animalisms, which would be released later that year in the US with a modified song lineup as Animalization. So is it just coincidence that the Animals included their own version of I Put A Spell On You on that album?

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    Reno, Nevada
Source:    Mono British import CD: Fairport Convention
Writer(s):    Richard Farina
Label:    Polydor
Year:    Recorded 1968, released 2003
    Most Americans who are familiar with Fairport Convention only know of the Sandy Denny version of the group that came into existence when Denny replaced Judy Dyble as the band's female vocalist. This change coincided with a shift from the San Francisco style improvisational folk-rock of the band's early days to a style more rooted in traditional English folk music. The original group only recorded one self-titled LP, released in the UK in 1968. As was often the case with debut albums, the group's improvisational skills were played down in favor of shorter, potentially more commercial, songs. This live recording of Richard Farina's Reno, Nevada, made on an April 27, 1968 appearance on a French TV show is a much better example of how Fairport Convention actually sounded in their early days.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    Shanghai Noodle Factory
Source:    LP: Last Exit (originally released in UK as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Winwood/Capaldi/Wood/Miller/Fallon
Label:    Island (original US LP label: United Artists)
Year:    1968
    After Traffic split up (for the first time), Island Records decided to milk one more album out of one their most popular groups. To do so they took studio outtakes, singles that had not been included on previous albums, and even an entire side of live performances, issuing the entire package in 1969 under the title Last Exit. Shanghai Noodle Factory, a song that was recorded without the participation of guitarist Dave Mason, was originally released in late 1968 as the B side of the Medicated Goo single.

Artist:    Elois
Title:    By My Side
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets II-Original Artyfacts From The British Empire And Beyond 1964-1969 (originally released in Australia as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Heenan/van Berkel/Rowe/Fiorini
Label:    Rhino (original label: In)
Year:    1967
    If the Easybeats were known as the "Australian Beatles", then, by all rights, the Elois (named after the race of pampered humans being bred for food in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine) should be called the "Australian Yardbirds". They certainly emulated their British heroes, even to the point of recording Bo Diddley's I'm A Man as their only single. They continued to channel the Yardbirds on the B side of that single, a self-composed tune called By My Side. The record was released on the obscure In label in 1967, but the Elois split up before they could record a followup.

Artist:    Chocolate Watchband
Title:    Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In) (originally released on LP: No Way Out and as 45 RPM single)
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 2-Punk
Writer:    McElroy/Bennett
Label:    Rhino (original label: Tower)
Year:    1967
    It took me several years to sort out the convoluted truth behind the recorded works of San Jose, California's most popular local band, the Chocolate Watchband. While it's true that much of what was released under their name was in fact the work of studio musicians, there are a few tracks that are indeed the product of Dave Aguilar and company. Are You Gonna Be There, a song used in the cheapie teensploitation flick The Love-In and included on the Watchband's first album, is one of those few. Even more ironic is the fact that the song was co-written by Don Bennett, the studio vocalist whose voice was substituted for Aguilar's on a couple of other songs from the same album.

Artist:    Blues Magoos
Title:    Summer Is The Man
Source:    CD: Kaleidoscopic Compendium (originally released on LP: Electric Comic Book)
Writer(s):    Gilbert/Esposito
Label:    Mercury
Year:    1967
    Following up on their successful debut LP, Psychedelic Lollipop, the Blues Magoos released Electric Comic Book in March of 1967. Unfortunately the first single from the album had two equally strong songs, one of which was favored by the producers and the other by the band. Radio stations were unsure which song to push, and as a result, neither made the top 40. Most of the remaining tracks on the album were written by the band members, including Summer Is The Man, a song with an interesting chord structure, a catchy melody and somewhat existential lyrics.

Artist:    Strawberry Alarm Clock
Title:    Incense And Peppermints
Source:    Mono LP: Nuggets Vol. 9-Acid Rock (originally released as 45 RPM single B side)
Writer(s):    Carter/Gilbert/Weitz/King
Label:    Rhino (original labels: All-American/Uni)
Year:    1967
    Thee Sixpence was a Los Angeles band that released four singles on the local All-American label, owned by the band's producer/manager Bill Holmes, in 1966. None of those records were written by band members, however. In fact, the B sides of the first three were covers of songs that had been recently released on fellow L.A. band Love's first album. One of those singles, a song called Fortune Teller, backed by My Flash On You, had even been reissued on the Dot label for national distribution, but had not charted. For their fifth single, Thee Sixpence worked with a new producer, Frank Slay, on The Birdman Of Alkatrash, a tune written by the band's keyboardist, Mark Weitz. The song was recorded in early 1967, along with an instrumental by Weiss and guitarist Ed King that was intended for the record's B side. Slay, however, brought in professional songwriters Tim Gilbert and John Carter to write lyrics and a melody line for the song, which became Incense And Peppermints. The members of Thee Sixpence, however, hated the new lyrics, and 16-year-old Greg Munford, a member of another local band called Shapes Of Sound, was brought in to provide lead vocals for the tune. It was, after all, only a B side, right? Around this time, the band decided to change their name from the faux-British sounding Thee Sixpence to the more psychedelically-flavored Strawberry Alarm Clock. Whether The Birdman of Alkatrash was ever issued under the Thee Sixpence name is disputed (nobody seems to have actually seen a copy), but All-American most definitely released it as the first Strawberry Alarm Clock single in April of 1967. Somewhere along the line a DJ flipped the record over and started playing Incense And Peppermints instead. The song caught on and Uni Records (short for Universal, which is now the world's largest record company) picked up the Strawberry Alarm Clock's contract and reissued the record nationally with Incense And Peppermints as the A side in May of 1967. By the end of November, Incense And Peppermints had become Uni's first #1 hit record, making it, to my knowledge the only instance of a hit single being played, but not sung, by the artist of record (the reverse being a fairly common occurence). Although the Strawberry Alarm Clock was never able to duplicate the success of Incense And Peppermints, the band did end up releasing a total of twelve singles and four LPs before disbanding in 1971,  Following the breakup guitarist Ed King became a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd (who had been the Strawberry Alarm Clock's opening band when they toured the south in 1970-71), and wrote the opening guitar riff of that band's first major hit, Sweet Home Alabama.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    The Story Of Rock And Roll
Source:    CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Harry Nilsson
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    Harry Nilsson was still an up and coming, but not yet arrived, young singer/songwriter when he penned The Story Of Rock And Roll. The Turtles, always in a struggle with their record label, White Whale, over whether to record their own material or rely on professional songwriters, were the first to record the tune, releasing it as a single in 1968. Although it was not a major hit, the song did set the stage for Nilsson's later successes.

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    You Baby
Source:    CD: 20 Greatest Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: You Baby)
Writer(s):    Sloan/Barri
Label:    Rhino (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1966
    After first hitting the charts with their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe, the Turtles released yet another "angry young rebel" song, P.F. Sloan's Let Me Be. Realizing that they needed to vary their subject matter somewhat if they planned on having a career lasting longer than six months, the band formerly known as the Crossfires went with another Sloan tune, You Baby, for their first single of 1966. Although the music was in a similar style to Let Me Be, the lyrics, written by Steve Barri, were fairly typical of teen-oriented love songs of the era. The Turtles would continue to record songs from professional songwriters for single release for the remainder of their existence, with their original compositions showing up mostly as album tracks and B sides.
 
Artist:    Turtles (recording as The Atomic Enchilada)
Title:    The Last Thing I Remember
Source:    CD: The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands
Writer(s):    The Turtles
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1968
    The Turtles hit their commercial peak in 1967 with their Happy Together album, which included two top 10 singles. Later that year they scored two more top 20 hits. By 1968, however, things were starting the change. Neither of their two non-album singles that year were able to crack the top 40, and the band itself was feeling creatively stifled by the pressure from their record label (which had no commercially viable acts other than the Turtles) to record "another Happy Together". Instead, they went the opposite direction, writing and producing a set of psychedelic tunes which were, or course, rejected by the label. Not long after that the band was reunited with producer Chip Douglas, who had briefly played bass for the Turtles before being persuaded to help the Monkees make the transition from a studio creation to an actual band. Working with Douglas, the Turtles came up with a concept album called The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands. Each song on the LP was produced and performed as if it were by an entirely different group. For example, The Last Thing I Remember (a reworking of one of their self-produced tracks) was credited to The Atomic Enchilada. As it turned out, the album contained the last two Turtles songs to make the top 10, and by 1970 the group, tired of the constant fights with their label, chose to disband.

Artist:     Beacon Street Union
Title:     Green Destroys The Gold
Source:     British import CD: The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union/The Clown Died In Marvin Gardens
Writer:     Wayne Ulaky
Label:     See For Miles (original label: M-G-M)
Year:     1967   
    The Beacon Street Union found itself handicapped by being signed to M-G-M and being promoted as part of the "boss-town sound." The problem was that there was no "boss-town sound", any more than there was a San Francisco sound or an L.A sound (there is a Long Island Sound, but that has nothing to do with music). In fact, the only legitimate "sound" of the time was the "Motown Sound", and that was confined to a single record company that achieved a consistent sound through the use of the same studio musicians on virtually every recording. What made the situation even more ironic for the Beacon Street Union was that by the time their first LP came out they had relocated to New York City anyway. If there is a New York sound, it has more to do with traffic than music. None of which has anything to do specifically with the song Green Destroys The Gold, which was written by the band's bass player, Wayne Ulaky, and included on their debut album The Eyes of the Beacon Street Union.

Artist:     Nazz
Title:     Open My Eyes
Source:     LP: Nuggets Vol. 1-The Hits (originally released as 45 RPM single and on LP: The Nazz)
Writer:     Todd Rundgren
Label:     Rhino (original label: SGC)
Year:     1968
     Nazz was a band from Philadelphia who were basically the victims of their own bad timing. 1968 was the year that progressive FM radio began to get recognition as a viable format while top 40 radio was being dominated by bubble gum pop bands such as the 1910 Fruitgum Company and the Ohio Express. Nazz, on the other hand, sounded more like British bands such as the Move and Brian Augur's Trinity that were performing well on the UK charts but were unable to buy a hit in the US. The band had plenty of talent, most notably guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Todd Rundgren, who would go on to establish a successful career, both as an artist (he played all the instruments on his Something/Anything LP and led the band Utopia) and a producer (Grand Funk's We're An American Band, among others). Open My Eyes was originally issued as the A side of a single, but ended up being eclipsed in popularity by its flip side, a song called Hello It's Me, that ended up getting airplay in Boston and other cities, eventually hitting the Canadian charts (a newly recorded version would become a solo hit for Rundgren five years later).

Artist:     Jethro Tull
Title:     Round
Source:     CD: This Was
Writer:     Anderson/Abrahams/Cornish/Bunker
Label:     Chrysalis/Capitol
Year:     1968
     Finishing out the show this week we have a one-minute piece from the first Jethro Tull album. It was probably just a short warm-up jam (or possibly a break song) that the band decided to include at the end of the album.

Rockin' in the Days of Confusion # 2045 (starts 11/2/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/344971-dc-2045

    This week the emphasis is on songs by artists that rarely get played on this show, including two (Second Hand and New Colony Six) that have never appeared on Rockin' in the Days of Confusion before. We do have a few tunes from our "regulars" as well, including a Led Zeppelin track that hasn't been played on the show since the two-hour long "pilot" episode that original aired as an Independence Day special on our companion show, Stuck in the Psychedelic Era, in 2016, and a track from David Bowie's Hunky Dory album that I have never heard played on the radio.

Artist:    Dr. John
Title:    Right Place Wrong Time
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM single
Writer(s):    Mac Rebenack
Label:    Atco
Year:    1973
    Mac Rebenack was a fixture on the New Orleans music scene for over 50 years. He first started performing publicly in his teens, lying about his age to able to play in some of the city's more infamous clubs. At age 13 he was expelled from Jesuit school and soon found work as a staff songwriter and guitarist for the legendary Aladdin label. In 1957, at age 16, he joined the musicians' union, officially beginning his professional career. In the early 1960s he got into trouble with the law and spent two years in federal prison. Upon his release he relocated to Los Angeles, due to an ongoing cleanup campaign in New Orleans that had resulted in most of the clubs he had previously played in being permanently shut down. While in L.A., Rebenack developed his Dr. John, the Night Tripper personna, based on a real-life New Orleans voodoo priest with psychedelic elements thrown in (it was 1968 after all). By the early 1970s Dr. John had developed a cult following, but was getting tired of the self-imposed limitations of his Night Tripper image. In 1972 he recorded an album of New Orleans cover songs, following it up with his most successful album, In The Right Place, in 1973. Produced by the legendary Allen Toussaint, In The Right Place provided Dr. John his most successful hit single, Right Place Wrong Time, which went into the top 10 in both the US and Canada and has remained one of the most recognizable tunes of the early 70s thanks to its use in various films over the years. Around this time he returned to New Orleans, but continued to record at some of the top studios in the country, both as a solo artist and as a session player, appearing on literally thousands of recordings over the years. Dr. John continued to perform until shortly before his death on June 6, 2019.

Artist:    J. Geils Band
Title:    I Don't Need You No More
Source:    British import LP: The New Age Of Atlantic (originally released on LP: The Morning After)
Writer(s):    Wolf/Justman
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1971
    I Don't Need You No More is the opening track of the second J. Geils Band album, The Morning After. It was also chosen for inclusion of the 1972 British sampler album The New Age Of Atlantic that came out in early 1972. The song was never released as a single, however.

Artist:    New Colony Six
Title:    People And Me
Source:    CD: Sunlight (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Bob Wilson
Label:    Sundazed (original label: Mercury)
Year:    1970
    Although best remembered for a pair of light pop hits that made the top 40 in 1968 (I Will Always Think About You and Things I'd Like to Say), The New Colony Six was actually one of the more successful regional bands of the late 1960s, with several tunes getting extensive airplay on Chicago's AM powerhouse WLS , which could be heard at night as far away as the Rocky Mountain states. Originally recording for the local Centaur (later Sentar) label, the NC6 signed with Mercury in 1968, releasing two LPs for the Chicago-based label. After the second LP, Attacking A Straw Man, failed to generate sales the group tried a harder sound for the non-LP single People And Me, released in 1970. After a few more unsuccessful singles, the New Colony Six finally called it quits in 1974, nine years after beginning their recording career.

Artist:    Climax Blues Band
Title:    Shake Your Love
Source:    Stereo 45 RPM promo single
Writer(s):    Climax/Gottehrer
Label:    Sire
Year:    1972
    Although never a first-tier group, the Climax Blues Band (formed in 1967 as the Climax Chicago Blues Band) nonetheless had a decent career, releasing a total of 19 albums during their existence. Among those was the 1972 LP Rich Man, which included Shake Your Love, a song that was also released to radio stations in single form. The tune was co-written by the band and their producer, Richard Gottehrer. Gottehrer is probably best known for writing or co-writing several hit songs in the 1960s, including My Boyfriend's Back, Hang On Sloopy, and I Want Candy, the latter being credited to Gottehrer's own band, the Strangeloves.

Artist:    Ten Years After
Title:    Portable People
Source:    CD: Ten Years After (bonus track originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Alvin Lee
Label:    Deram
Year:    1968
    Following the release of the 1967 debut LP, Ten Years After got to work on what was to be a followup album. These plans got sidetracked, however, when it was decided that their second LP would be made up of live performances taped at a London club near a recording studio. This left the band with several finished studio recordings, many of which were the same songs that would appear on the live Undead album. Two of the other unused studio tracks became the band's first US single, the A side of which was a tune called Portable People. This song remained unavailable in any other form for several years, finally appearing as a bonus track on the CD version of their first album.

Artist:    Graham Nash/David Crosby
Title:    Girl To Be On My Mind
Source:    British import LP: Graham Nash David Crosby
Writer(s):    Graham Nash
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1972
    In fall of 1971, after each releasing successful solo albums following the first breakup of Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, Graham Nash and David Crosby embarked on a series of concerts together, performing several new songs that would appear the following year on the album Graham Nash David Crosby. Most of the songs on the album, including Nash's Girl To Be On My Mind, feature backing tracks by the Section, a group of in-demand studio musicians based in southern California consisting of Craig Doerge, Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, and Russell Kunkel.

Artist:    Led Zeppelin
Title:    The Rain Song
Source:    CD: Houses Of The Holy
Writer(s):    Page/Plant
Label:    Atlantic
Year:    1973
    One of the most popular songs in the Led Zeppelin catalog, The Rain Song was reportedly written in response to a comment made by George Harrison of the Beatles to drummer John Bonham, that Led Zeppelin never did any ballads. When guitarist Jimmy Page heard about it he went to work on the piece, which he initially called Slush for its simulated orchestral arrangements on guitar. He presented the finished melody to Robert Plant, who then wrote lyrics and came up with the final title for the tune. John-Paul Jones added mellotron tracks, adding to the orchestral feel of the seven and a half minute long piece.

Artist:    Alice Cooper
Title:    Dead Babies
Source:    LP: Killer
Writer(s):    Cooper/Smith/Buxon/Bruce/Dunaway
Label:    Warner Brothers
Year:    1971
    Alice Cooper (the band) raised a lot of eyebrows when they released a song called Dead Babies on their 1971 Killer album. Because of the band's reputation for outrageousness, a lot of people assumed that the song must be about some sort of imaginary deviant behavior. Unfortunately, the truth is  far worse. Dead Babies, in fact, is about a very real form of behavior that is all too common in the modern world: child neglect, and its tragic consequences. The song was a highlight of the band's Killer and School's Out tours, where it was followed immediately (as it is on the LP itself) by the song Killer, which featured the most talked-about part of the band's stage show, in which frontman Alice Cooper was led up to, and hung on, a gallows to close out the band's performance.

Artist:    Davic Bowie
Title:    The Bewlay Brothers
Source:    CD: Hunky Dory
Writer(s):    David Bowie
Label:    Parlophone (original label: RCA Victor)
Year:    1971
    Called by one critic "probably the most cryptic, mysterious, unfathomable and downright frightening Bowie recording in existence", The Bewlay Brothers is the final track on the 1971 album Hunky Dory, and the one with the longest lyrics. Bowie himself, in a 1977 interview, called it "another vaguely anecdotal piece about my feelings about myself and my brother, or my other doppelgänger. I was never quite sure what real position Terry had in my life, whether Terry was a real person or whether I was actually referring to another part of me, and I think 'Bewlay Brothers' was really about that."

Artist:    Second Hand
Title:    Reality
Source:    British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: Reality)
Writer(s):    Elliott/Gibbons
Label:    Polydor
Year:    1968
    Formed in Streatham, South London, in 1965 by vocalist/keyboardist Ken Elliott, guitarist Bob Gibbons and drummer Kieran O'Connor, the Next Collection soon won a local battle of the bands and the opportunity to make a demo recording at Maximum Sound Studios. This brought them to the attention of producer Vic Keary, who got them signed to Polydor in 1968 under the name Moving Finger. Just as the album Reality was about to be released, however, another band called the Moving Finger released a single on another label, forcing Elliot and company to come up with a new band name, as well as new packaging for the LP. The name they chose was Second Hand, since all of their equipment had been bought used. Apparently the delay also caused some rethinking on the part of the people at Polydor, who had initially been enthusiastic supporters of the band. When Reality was released in late 1968 it got no promotional support whatsoever from the label, and was a commercial failure. In recent years, however, Second Hand's Reality, including the title track, has come to be recognized as one of the pioneering albums of the prog-rock movement, predating bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer by several years.

Artist:    Firesign Theatre
Title:    Back From The Shadows Again
Source:    LP: I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus
Writer(s):    Proctor/Bergman/Austin/Ossman
Label:    Columbia
Year:    1971
    I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus is the fourth Firesign Theatre album, released in 1971. Like it's predecessor, Don't Touch That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers, Bozos is one continuous narrative covering both sides of an LP. It tells the story of a visit to a Future Fair that somewhat resembles Disney's Tomorrowland, with various interractive educational exhibits such as the Wall Of Science. The piece was actually made up of shorter bits that the Firesign Theatre had used previously on their weekly radio show, but reworked and re-recorded for the new album. One of these was Back From The Shadows Again, sung to the tune of Gene Autry's signature song Back In The Saddle Again.

Artist:    Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Title:    Seeds And Stems (again)
Source:    LP: Lost In The Ozone
Writer(s):    Farlowe/Frayne
Label:    Paramount
Year:    1971
    Okay, so Seeds And Stems (again), from the first album by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Lost In The Ozone, may not officially be recognized as the ultimate country song, but it should be. I mean, the guy's woman leaves him, his home gets repossessed and his dog dies...how can you get more country than that? By finding yourself down to Seeds and Stems (Again), that's how.

Stuck in the Psychedelic Era # 2044 (starts 10/26/20)

https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/344142-pe-2044 

    I've been promising myself for a long time that one of these years I would do an entire show centered around Halloween themes. This is that show.

Artist:    Donovan
Title:    Season Of The Witch
Source:    CD: Donovan's Greatest Hits (originally released on LP: Sunshine Superman)
Writer:    Donovan Leitch
Label:    Sony (original label: Epic)
Year:    1966 (stereo version, 1969)
     Season Of The Witch has proved to be one of the most popular and enduring tracks on Donovan's Sunshine Superman album. Due to a contract dispute with Pye Records, the album was not released in the UK until late 1967, and then only as an LP combining tracks from both the Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow albums. Like all tracks from both Sunshine Superman and Mellow Yellow, Season Of The Witch was only available in a mono mix until 1969, when a new stereo mix was created from the original multi-track masters for the singer/songwriter's first greatest hits compilation. Season of the Witch has since been covered by an impressive array of artists, including Al Kooper and Stephen Stills (on the Super Session album) and Vanilla Fudge.

Artist:    October Country
Title:    My Girlfriend Is A Witch
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Michael Lloyd
Label:    Rhino (original label: Epic)
Year:    1968
    By 1968 the L.A. under-age club scene was winding down, and several now out of work bands were making last (and sometimes only) attempts at garnering hits in the studio. One such band was October Country, whose first release had gotten a fair amount of local airplay, but who had become bogged down trying to come up with lyrics for a follow-up single. Enter Michael Lloyd, recently split from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and looking to become a record producer. Lloyd not only produced and wrote the lyrics for My Girlfriend Is A Witch, he also ended up playing drums on the record as well. Since then Lloyd has gone on to be one of the most successful record producers in L.A. (the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, for instance).

Artist:    Lollipop Shoppe (actual name: The Weeds)
Title:    You Must Be A Witch
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Fred Cole
Label:    Rhino (original label: Uni)
Year:    1968
    The Weeds were formed in Las Vegas in 1965 by vocalist Fred Cole, who at age 16 was already a recording studio veteran. They showed up at the Fillmore to open for the Yardbirds in 1966 only to find out that their manager had lied to them about being on the playbill (in fact Bill Graham had never even heard of them). Disenchanted with their management and fearing the Draft, the entire band decided to head for Canada, but ran out of gas in Portland, Oregon. They soon landed a regular gig at a club called the Folk Singer (where Cole met his future wife Toody) and after relocating to Southern California in 1968 attracted the attention of Seeds' manager Lord Tim, who got them a contract with MCA Records (now Universal). They recorded one album for MCA's Uni label, (discovering after the fact that Lord Tim had changed their name to the Lollipop Shoppe), which included the single You Must Be A Witch. Fred Cole has since become an icon of indy rock, returning to Portland to co-lead the band Dead Moon with his wife Toody from 1987-2006.

Artist:    Sonics
Title:    The Witch
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    Gerald Roslie
Label:    Rhino (original label: Etiquette)
Year:    1964
    The #1 selling single in the history of the Pacific Northwest was this tune by one of the founding bands of the Seattle music scene. The Sonics were as raw as any punk rock band of the seventies, as The Witch proves beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Artist:    Fairport Convention
Title:    It's Alright Ma, It's Only Witchcraft
Source:    CD: Spirit of Joy (originally released on LP: Fairport Convention)
Writer(s):    Hutchings/Thompson
Label:    Polydor (original US label: Cotillion)
Year:    1968
    Fairport Convention has long been known for their role in the British folk music revival that came to prominence in the early 70s. Originally, however, the band was modeled after the folk-rock bands on the US West Coast that took the world by storm in 1965 and 1966. Their first LP was released in early 1968, and drew favorable reviews from the UK rock press, which saw them at Britain's answer to Jefferson Airplane. One of the LP's highlights is It's Alright, It's Only Witchcraft, which features electric guitar work by Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol that rivals that of Jorma Kaukonen. The album was not initially released in the US. Two years later, following the success of Fairport Convention's later albums with vocalist Sandy Denny on the A&M label, the band's first LP (with Judy Dyble) was given a limited release on Atlantic's Cotillion subsidiary.

Artist:    Fifty Foot Hose
Title:    Cauldron
Source:    LP: Cauldron
Writer:    BlossoM/Marcheschi/Kimsey
Label:    Limelight
Year:    1968
    Although New York is generally considered the epicenter for avant-garde rock, there were things happening out on the West Coast as well, including the United States Of America (led by an expatriot Manhattanite) in Los Angeles and Fifty Foot Hose in San Francisco. Fifty Foot Hose featured Cork Marcheschi's homemade electronic instruments and the unique vocal style of Nancy Blossom. The group disbanded when all of the members except Marcheschi left to join the cast of the musical Hair. Nancy Blossom herself played the female lead, Sheila, in the San Francisco production of the rock musical.

Artist:    Ultimate Spinach
Title:    (Ballad Of The) Hip Death Goddess
Source:    LP: Ultimate Spinach
Writer(s):    Ian Bruce-Douglas
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    Ultimate Spinach was the brainchild of Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote and arranged all the band's material. Although the group had no hit singles, some tracks, such as (Ballad of the) Hip Death Goddess received a significant amount of airplay on progressive "underground" FM stations. The recording has in more recent years been used by movie producers looking to invoke a late 60s atmosphere.

Artist:    Eric Burdon and the Animals
Title:    The Black Plague
Source:    British import CD: Winds Of Change
Writer(s):    Burdon/Briggs/Weider/Jenkins/McCulloch
Label:    Repertoire (original US label: M-G-M)
Year:    1967
    One of the most interesting recordings of 1967 was Eric Burdon And The Animals' The Black Plague, which appeared on the Winds Of Change album. The Black Plague is a spoken word piece dealing with life and death in a medieval village during the time of the Black Plague (natch), set to a somewhat gothic piece of music that includes Gregorian style chanting and an occasional voice calling out the words "bring out your dead" in the background. The album itself had a rather distinctive cover, consisting of a stylized album title accompanied by a rather lengthy text piece on a scroll against a black background, something that has never been done before or since on an album cover.

Artist:    Country Joe And The Fish
Title:    Death Sound Blues
Source:    CD: Electric Music For The Mind And Body
Writer(s):    Joe McDonald
Label:    Vanguard
Year:    1967
    I generally use the term "psychedelic" to describe a musical attitude that existed during a particular period of time rather than a specific style of music. On the other hand, the term "acid rock" is better suited for describing music that was composed and/or performed under the influence of certain mind-expanding substances. That said, the first album by Country Joe and the Fish is a classic example of acid rock. I mean, really, is there any other way to describe Death Sound Blues than "the blues on acid"?

Artist:    Turtles
Title:    Grim Reaper Of Love
Source:    Mono CD: All The Singles (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Portz/Nichol
Label:    Manifesto (original label: White Whale)
Year:    1966
    The Turtles had some early success in 1965 as a folk-rock band, recording the hit version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe and PF Sloan's Let Me Be. By 1966, however, it was getting harder and harder for the group to get a hit record. One attempt was Grim Reaper Of Love, co-written by Turtles lead guitarist Al Nichol. Personally I think it's a pretty cool tune, but was probably a bit too weird to appeal to the average top 40 radio listener in 1966. Grim Reaper Of Love did manage to make it to the # 81 spot on the charts, unlike the band's next two singles that failed to chart at all. It wasn't until the following year, when the Turtles recorded Happy Together, that the band would make it back onto the charts.

Artist:    Strangeloves
Title:    I Want Candy
Source:    Mono CD: Nuggets-Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Feldman/Goldstein/Gottehrer/Berns
Label:    Rhino (original label: Bang)
Year:    1966
    In the wake of the British Invasion, some American artists tried to sound as British as possible, often deliberately letting radio listeners think that they themselves might be a British band. A trio of New York songwriters, Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer, took such deceptions to a whole new level. Rather than try to pass themselves off as a British band, the three invented an elaborate backstory that saw them as sons of an Australian sheepherder who had invented a new shearing process and had used the profits from the venture to form a band called the Strangeloves, who were about to become the Next Big Thing. Although the story never really caught on, the group managed to record two of the all-time great party songs, I Want Candy and Night Time, as well as producing a single called Hang On Sloopy for a band they discovered on the road called the McCoys (although the instrumental tracks were actually from the Strangeloves' own first LP). According to press releases the pounding drum beat on I Want Candy was made by Masai drums that the band members had found while on safari in Africa, which just goes to show you can find just about anything in the New York City area if you know where to look.

Artist:    Beatles
Title:    Savoy Truffle
Source:    LP: The Beatles
Writer(s):    George Harrison
Label:    Apple
Year:    1968
    George Harrison's skills as a songwriter continued to develop in 1968. The double-LP The Beatles (aka the White Album) contained four Harrison compositions, including Savoy Truffle, a tongue-in-cheek song about Harrison's friend Eric Clapton's fondness for chocolate. John Lennon did not participate in the recording of Savoy Truffle. The keyboards were probably played by Chris Thomas, who, in addition to playing on all four Harrison songs on the album, served as de facto producer when George Martin decided to take a vacation in the middle of the album's recording sessions. 

Artist:    P.F. Sloan
Title:    Halloween Mary
Source:    Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:    P.F. Sloan
Label:    Rhino (original label: Dunhill)
Year:    1965
    If there is any one songwriter associated specifically with folk-rock (as opposed to folk music), it would be the Los Angeles based P.F. Sloan, writer of Barry McGuire's signature song, Eve Of Destruction. Sloan also penned hits for the Turtles in their early days as one of the harder-edged folk-rock bands, including their second hit, Let Me Be. In fact, Sloan had almost 400 songs to his credit by the time he and Steve Barri teamed up to write and produce a series of major hits released by various bands under the name Grass Roots. Sloan himself, however, only released two singles as a singer, although (as can be heard on the second of them, the slightly off-kilter Halloween Mary) he had a voice as powerful as many of the recording stars of the time.

Artist:        Randy Newman
Title:        Last Night I Had A Dream
Source:      Mono CD: Where The Action Is: L.A. Nuggets 1965-68 (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer:        Randy Newman
Label:        Rhino (original label: Reprise)
Year:        1968
        Randy Newman has, over the course of the past fifty-plus years, established himself as a Great American Writer of Songs. His work includes dozens of hit singles (over half of which were performed by other artists), nearly two dozen movie scores and eleven albums as a solo artist. Newman has won five Grammys, as well as two Oscars and Three Emmys. Last Night I Had A Dream was Newman's second single for the Reprise label  (his third overall), coming out the same year as his first LP, which did not include the song.

Artist:    Mike Oldfield
Title:    Tubular Bells
Source:    LP: Tubular Bells
Writer(s):    Mike Oldfield
Label:    Virgin
Year:    1973
    Tubular Bells was the first album ever released by Virgin Records. It got a lot of critical acclaim when it was first released, but did not take off commercially until the first few minutes of the piece were used in a film called The Exorcist. Several sequels have been recorded in the years since the album's original 1973 release, including Tubular Bells II and III and The Millenium Bell (released in 1999).

Artist:     Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Title:     Fire
Source:     British import CD: Spirit Of Joy (originally released on LP: The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown and as 45 RPM single)
Writer:     Brown/Crane/Finesilver/Ker
Label:     Polydor (original US label: Atlantic)
Year:     1968
     The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was unusual for their time in that they were much more theatrical than most of their contemporaries, who were generally more into audio experimentation than visual. I have a video of Fire being performed (or maybe just lip-synched). In it, all the members are wearing some sort of mask, and Brown himself is wearing special headgear that was literally on fire. There is no doubt that The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown sowed the seeds of what was to become the glitter-rock movement in the early to mid 70s.

Artist:    Who
Title:    I'm A Boy (re-recorded stereo version)
Source:    CD: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA (original label: Decca)
Year:    1966
    The Who's1966 hit I'm A Boy was originally intended to be part of a rock mini-opera set in a future where parents choose the sex of their children ahead of time. The family of the protagonist orders four girls, but instead gets three girls and a boy. Refusing to acknowledge the truth, the mother insists on dressing the boy in girl's clothing and forces him to do "feminine" things. OK, it's a pretty absurd idea, but the song, recorded in early August of 1966 and released about two weeks later, ended up going all the way to the #2 spot on the British charts. The stereo version of the song on the album Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy is slightly slower and a bit longer than the original hit single, and was recorded about two months later, on October 3rd.

Artist:     Who
Title:     Disguises
Source:     Mono CD: A Quick One (bonus track originally released in UK on 45 RPM EP: Ready Steady Who)
Writer:     Pete Townshend
Label:     MCA (original label: Reaction)
Year:     1966
     After a successful appearance on the British TV show Ready Steady Go (the UK's answer to American Bandstand), the Who released an EP featuring mostly cover songs such as Bucket T and the Batman theme. Two tracks on the record, however, were Who originals: a new version of Circles (a song that originally appeared on the My Generation album) and Disguises, which made its debut as the lead track of the EP. When MCA issued a remastered version of A Quick One in the 1990s, the entire contents of the EP (except Circles) were included as bonus tracks on the CD.

Artist:    Who
Title:    Substitute
Source:    Mono CD: Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Pete Townshend
Label:    MCA (original label: Atco)
Year:    1966
    In the spring of 1967 my dad, a career military man, got word that he was being transferred from Denver, Colorado to Weisbaden, Germany. By the end of  summer, our entire family had relocated to a converted WWII Panzer barracks that was serving as a housing area for married US military personnel and their families. The Kastel housing area, which was just outside of the village of Mainz-Kastel, which in turn was located directly across the Rhine from the city of Mainz itself, was probably the smallest US housing area in all of Europe, consisting of only eight buildings. Needless to say, there were not many other American kids my age living there, a fact that ended up working to my advantage. You see, in Denver I had been playing first chair violin in the Smiley Junior High School orchestra; a position that looked good to the adults in the room but was the kiss of death to a 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers. So, naturally, as one of only half a dozen or so teenaged boys in the Kastel Housing Area, I jumped at the chance to learn how to play the guitar, a much cooler instrument than the violin in the eyes of  a 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers. There were two guys at Kastel who a) had guitars and b) were willing to put up with an obnoxious 14-year-old boy trying desperately to fit in with his peers long enough to teach him a few chords. The first was was a 10th-grader named Darrell Combs, who went by the nickname Butch (his older sister Darlene being responsible for that one). The other was an 11th-grader named Mike Davenport, who had been in Germany longer than the rest of us and had his own Fender amp. Mike also had a collection of records that had been popular on Radio Luxembourg, a powerful AM and shortwave station that broadcast an American styled top 40 format aimed at a British audience, playing hits from the UK singles charts. Among those records were several singles by the Who, including their chart-topping 1966 UK hit Substitute. Mike and Butch had been trying to figure out the chords to Substitute, but had not been able to get beyond the intro of the song. After listening to the record once or twice (yes, I'm bragging) I was able to figure out the rest of the song. Not long after that I was able to talk my parents into buying me a guitar and a small amp as an early Christmas present (that ended up doubling as my 15th birthday present as well). With three guitarists, two amps, and a drummer named Zachary Long in our arsenal, we formed a band called The Abundance Of Love (hey, it was 1967, OK?), which soon got changed to the Haze And Shades Of Yesterday and finally just The Shades. One of the first songs we learned to play was (you guessed it), Substitute by the Who. The Shades ended up lasting until the summer of 1968, at which time my dad got transferred again, this time to Ramstein AFB, Germany.

Artist:    Beacon Street Union
Title:    South End Incident (I'm Afraid)
Source:    LP: The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union
Writer(s):    Wayne Ulaky
Label:    M-G-M
Year:    1968
    The Beacon Street Union's South End Incident (I'm Afraid) was reportedly based on a real incident. According to the story, bassist Wayne Ulaky witnessed a mugging in one of Boston's seedier neighborhoods and spent the rest of that evening looking over his shoulder, worried that the muggers might have seen him. He then wrote a song about it that got recorded by the band and released on their debut LP, The Eyes Of The Beacon Street Union.

Artist:    Cream
Title:    Strange Brew
Source:    CD: Disraeli Gears
Writer(s):    Clapton/Collins/Pappalardi
Label:    Polydor.Polygram (original label: Atco)
Year:    1967
    Strange Brew, the opening track from Cream's Disraeli Gears album, was also released as a single in early 1967. The song has proven popular enough over the years to be included on pretty much every Cream anthology album ever compiled, and even inspired a Hollywood movie of the same name.

Artist:    Classics IV
Title:    Spooky
Source:    45 RPM single (reissue)
Writer(s):    Sharpe/Middlebrooks/Buie/Cobb
Label:    Silver Spotlight (original label: Imperial)
Year:    1967
    Most people don't know this (it was news to me too), but the Halloween classic Spooky, by the Classics IV, was orginally an instrumental. The tune was written by saxophonist Mike Sharpe, with Harry Middlebrooks, Jr. and released by Sharpe in 1967, making it to the #57 on the Billboard charts. Late in the year, Classics IV guitarist J. R. Cobb and producer Buddy Buie came up with lyrics for the song in time to get the song recorded and released by Halloween, and the band scored their first top 40 hit with the song, featuring drummer Dennis Yost on lead vocals. The Classics IV continued to hit the top 40 charts into the early 1970s, with Yost moving out from behind the drum kit and taking over top billing (See? Phil Collins wasn't the first to do that!), while Cobb and Buie, as a side project, formed the Atlanta Rhythm Section in 1970. Finally, in 1975, Yost officially went solo, ending the story of the Classics IV.

Artist:    Traffic
Title:    (Roamin' Thro' The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen
Source:    CD: Smiling Phases (originally released as 45 RPM B side and on LP: Traffic)
Writer(s):    Capaldi/Winwood
Label:    Island (original label: United Artists)
Year:    1968
    The second Traffic album saw the band taking in a broader set of influences, including traditional English folk music. (Roamin' Through The Gloamin' With) 40,000 Headmen, originally released as the B side to the Dave Mason tune No Face, No Name, No Number, combines those influences with the Steve Winwood brand of British R&B to create a timeless classic.

Artist:    Kinks
Title:    Lola
Source:    Mono Canadian CD: 25 Years-The Ultimate Collection (originally released as 45 RPM single)
Writer(s):    Ray Davies
Label:    Polygram/PolyTel (original label: Reprise)
Year:    1970
    By 1970 the Kinks were all but forgotten in the US and not doing all that much better in their native UK. Then came Lola. I guess I could stop right there. Or I could mention that the song was based on a true story involving the band's manager. I could even say something about Dave Davies' claim that, although his brother Ray is credited as the sole songwriter of Lola, Dave actually came up with the music and Ray added the lyrics. But you've probably heard it all before. This is Lola, the most famous transvestite song in history, we're talking about, after all.

Artist:    Creedence Clearwater Revival
Title:     I Put A Spell On You
Source:     CD: Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back To Yasgur's Farm
Writer:     Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Label:     Rhino
Year:     1969
     Before getting major attention for its string of top five singles (including three consecutive # 2 songs), CCR released a pair of cover tunes in 1968: Dale Hawkins' Suzy Q and this one from an entirely different Hawkins, Screamin' Jay. Although the Creedence version of I Put A Spell On You only made it to the # 58 spot on the national charts, it was still part of their repertoire when they played at Woodstock the following year.

Artist:    King Crimson
Title:    The Court Of The Crimson King
Source:    CD: In The Court Of The Crimson King
Writer:    MacDonald/Sinfield
Label:    Discipline Global Mobile (original label: Atlantic)
Year:    1969
    Perhaps the most influential progressive rock album of all time was King Crimson's debut LP, In The Court Of The Crimson King. The band, in its original incarnation, included Robert Fripp on guitar, Ian MacDonald on keyboards and woodwinds, Greg Lake on vocals and bass, David Giles on drums and Peter Sinfield as a dedicated lyricist. The title track, which takes up the second half of side two of the LP, features music composed by MacDonald, who would leave the group after their second album, later resurfacing as a founding member of Foreigner. The album's distinctive cover art came from a painting by computer programmer Barry Godber, who died of a heart attack less than a year after the album was released. According to Fripp, the artwork on the inside is a portrait of the Crimson King, whose manic smile is in direct contrast to his sad eyes. The album, song and artwork were the inspiration for Stephen King's own Crimson King, the insane antagonist of his Dark Tower saga who is out to destroy all of reality, including our own.

Artist:        Vanilla Fudge
Title:        Season of the Witch
Source:       LP: Renaissance
Writer:        Donovan Leitch
Label:        Atco
Year:        1968
        The Vanilla Fudge are generally best remembered for their acid rock rearrangements of hit songs such as You Keep Me Hangin' On, Ticket To Ride and Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). Their third album, Renaissance, while actually featuring more original material that their previous albums, still included a couple of these cover songs. The best-known of these was this rather spooky (and a little over-the-top) version of Donovan's Season Of The Witch, a song that was also covered by Al Kooper and Stephen Stills the same year on the first Super Session album.The track features a spoken section written by Essra Mohawk, a singer/songwriter whose own debut album was produced by Frank Zappa.

Artist:    Mike Oldfield
Title:    Tubular Bells
Source:    LP: Tubular Bells
Writer(s):    Mike Oldfield
Label:    Virgin
Year:    1973
    Side one of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells album runs over 25 minutes in length. Most people have only heard the beginning section of the piece used in the 1973 film The Exorcist. I thought this might be a nice time to reveal a little of what comes after.